


A Final Act

by deskclutter



Category: The Sandman
Genre: Community: 31_days, Deathfic, Gen, mangled history, shoulder angel shoulder devil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-06-25
Updated: 2010-06-25
Packaged: 2017-10-10 06:36:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 898
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/96698
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deskclutter/pseuds/deskclutter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Christopher Marlowe on the night of his death.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Final Act

**Title:** A Final Act  
**Day/Theme:** Feb. 14 / Our swords shall play the orators for us  
**Series:** Sandman  
**Character/Pairing:** Dream, Desire, a playwright, Death  
**Rating:** PG

  
Let us sketch for our most esteemed audience the scene: The light is not long dead; evening lies early on the day's meter. Candlelit windows beyond the tavern's doors have set a forest of pinprick fireflies ablaze through merry London in false echo of the night sky. Within, Dionysus might lament the lack of wine, but he would not find fault with the plentiful flow of ale. Barmaids loose forced squeals of outrage at the wandering hands that perform their ministry of impropriety, for the tavern is a den of iniquity. Fie, fie on cakes and ale! Though there are few cakes, halving the total of said iniquity. Yet the ale is twice the lot accounted, and so perhaps the lack is made up. Who may say? How doth one iniquity measure? What is the account of flippancy and frippery? Where is the rule by which _wants_ weigh?

But man ought not think such deep thoughts when ensconced in a den, iniquitous thereof.

In a corner, a song, unsteady in rhythm and melody both but no less sweet for it, has gained some momentum to an audience of drunken jeers. The crush of nine-pin bowls thunders faint through the walls; they banned they banned the stuff of van Winkle's mead-forced trance, but fun is little stalled by the machinations of unimaginative men. What is imagination but the stuff of dreams and desires? But there! philosophy has slipped her leash again.

Coin plays legal currency, but currency and trade takes many forms. A man sells a story for an appreciative audience: "Know ye all the madwoman who gads about the pigeons a few little lanes hence? I heard say from her own lips of men, two by that stripe, who have a wager at cheating the Reaper. In this very tavern, they meet once for each hundred year, to honour their old bet."

The growing jeers from the other end of the room mingles with laughing derision from the entertained audience, but the spinner is no less pleased, nor unpaid. A voice rings free, in a manner of musing, "A good play 'twould make, if awarded the right character."

"O, do ye bank on the writing of another play then?" queries the storyteller.

"Soon as I have writ down the next chapter of the first," says the playwright. "It is all but done in my mind; the only deed that needs doing is the putting ink to parchment." His voice raises towards the end of his sentence, shearing raggedly through the crowd. "Yet this tale has merit also. Enough to burn some ears and faces, sure. Perhaps a meeting 'twixt the Wandering Jew and the Old N--"

Allow the attention to fall back to the other end of the tavern. The song has grown, the jeers with it, and faces flush with ale and anger have taken up an ugly countenance. Edged tones have entered the voices of both chorusers and jeering mob. Wiser men have gone long ago; all who are left are the angry and the madmen, for in none else do the twin stirrings of dreaming and desire hold so strong.

"Methinks I'd best bestir myself gone," say the men around the playwright, and they disperse. But the playwright watches the shadows in the flickering lamplight and cannot hear their warnings. On his shoulders each stands a vocal figure, or a figurative voice: the distinction matters not.

One speaks: "The wary man would seek his sport in some else wise of this place."

"Oh come," purrs the other. "Where would the sport be in that? You wish to engage in the heart-pound rush of battle, as any hot blooded man would. Therefore indulge! The world, as it were, is your oyster! Who is to gainsay _you_?"

In answer, the first speaks again, "A brawler brawls; a playwright writes."

"O sweet brother," sighs the second voice mockingly. "Know you not your own game? A playwright _plays_."

The first voice is chill in its rejoinder: "The end, however, falls to human choice. Sirrah, you must choose."

"Enough!" murmurs the playwright; "I am reminded of young Will in his guilty wracks, waffling to and fro on whether our art be the Devil's gift or no. They're one and the same, cakes and ale and plays and sport! The Devil's the choice; I've joined him with good will!"

Blood sings, a liquid spatter of spurt and roar. The playwright enters the fray; in the end, none know if 'twas a knife slid sweet between the ribs or the blunted club of a heavy fist. In the end, the distinction matters not. All need be known are of the tales of dream and desire: these will never take the place they ought, were it not for an ill-placed tavern brawl.

The curtain will fall, the players ready to return backstage; one to leave the affairs of humans be, the other to howl with hysterical poise at its accordance of Lucifer's ignominy. But here first stand the final lines of our act:

"Hi, Kit. No, not everyone gets a free pass, I'm afraid. If it helps, I know Will is going to be really cut up about this. Come now, Kit Marlowe, take my hand..."


End file.
